That’s what I told the crowd at Foothills Arts Council in Elkin last Saturday evening where we’d gathered for live music by Angie and Marc and LIVE POETRY by Michael. I’m talking LIVE! Every time I’ve experienced a poetic happening with Michael Beadle my creative metabolic rate has been kicked up at least three notches. Brainstorming the Zoo Poetry project we did together with Pat Riviere-Seel and Sue Farlow three years ago; joining a dozen other Jabberwockers to act out the poem at Michael’s direction; wandering through Weymouth Woods to collect haikuopons — energy is what Michael brings to poetry.

Alas, on Saturday Michael had a health issue at the last minute and couldn’t make the gig, but fortunately I have two of his books, so I pretended to be him for a few minutes (sort of like Danny DeVito pretending to be Arnold Schwarzenegger). And I had brought Plank Road and other books by Shelby Stephenson for show-and-tell before we launched the open mic. No crowds rolled in the guillotine clamoring for my head. No disappointed metaphorists vowed to forever give up the verbal art in their disappointment. No babies cried. McRitchies Winery did not run out of hard cider. We had a pretty good time together.

But we sure missed Michael.

* * * * *

We also had music by singer-songwriter-acoustic guitarist Angie Caswell accompanied on baritone guitar by Marc Curtis. Angela says she’s been singing since she could speak and has studied music all her life. She enjoys writing acoustic jams that uplift and inspire. She loves to lead worship but also to recreate top 40 hits in artsy, indie fashion. Angela currently lives in Elkin, North Carolina and says, “I aspire to change things, one song at a time.”

flying up and crossing over
winging along side
so I could know her
for mere seconds
but years really
each feather forever etched
upon my memory
then she was off
higher than I could go

I may have lost sight of her
but never lost the vision
or the experience of being next to her
and although my presence
may have changed her velocity
could it be said
that I affected her too?

Leighanne Martin Wright is executive director of the Foothills Arts Council in Elkin, NC

* * * * *

photo credit: Leighanne Wright

by Dominic Neumark

Vanitas

Whither does the skull in the old painting look
…an hourglass and a candle by its side?
Does it see the passing of time or of life?

How appropriate, a painting on brink of winter
Death treads through snow, among dead trees
Not a monarch…but a swindler.

For who could say that he comes at a good time?
Always too early, always too late.
At the gate of your home, boots dark with grime.

Then there’s the candle, a flickering light
Seemingly alive, like a dancing sprite
Then gone without a fight.

Ah, and the hourglass…what does it say?
The grains gone to the bottom long ago
Telling the victims of fate: “life too shall pass.”

…but what of undone deeds (and) unfulfilled desires?
What of countless “what ifs” and “could haves?”
“Silence!” says the skull. “No need is now dire.”

* * * * *

photo credit: Leighanne Wright

by Kim Seipel-Parks

In my grandmother’s kitchen

She lets me make
the biscuits.

Standing on the stool’s woven seat
that creaks and moans, I wear
her apron,
black
with bright embroidered flowers.
(It’s long enough to hide my shoes.)
The flour puffs into a cloud
as she pours it in the bowl –

some settles on my nose and dusts
my eyelashes.
In an exploration, my tiny fingers
make trails,
push the flour to the sides, dig a hole
that she fills with buttermilk.

My fingers wade into the coldness,
search for the bottom and pull
the flour in.
Making a fist, the sloppy dough
squishes through.
Skin loose and wrinkled,
knuckles swollen,
her hands guide mine.

* * * * *

photo credit: Leighanne Wright

by Mary Oliver, read by Jane Hazelman

Today

Today I’m flying low and I’m
not saying a word.
I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep.

The world goes on as it must,
the bees in the garden rumbling a little,
the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten.
And so forth.

But I’m taking the day off.
Quiet as a feather.
I hardly move though really I’m traveling

a terrific distance.

Stillness. One of the doors
into the temple.

* * * * *

photo credit: Leighanne Wright

by Bill Griffin

Canada Goose, Country Road

Dressed like a bouncer in some pretentious restaurant
or Jesse Ventura with the cameras rolling
you and your lady friend disdain my car,
a diffident amble down the white line,
deliberate steps deliberately unperturbed.

Goose, I want you to be afraid
because I am afraid of feathers and blood
on the tarmac, on my bumper –
last spring I saw your ungainly progeny
one minute all down & punk & pursuing gape,
the next minute opened like a meat counter specialty.

I honk, but you say, “Well, that sounds like ‘Hello,’”
so I hop out, raise my arms. Look here, Anseriformes,
this is a mammal and a big one!
But you don’t care,
who’s backed down a fox and flattened a weasel,
who’s forsaken migration and become a million.

Another strategy – I rush your mate.
Now you’re paying attention! and I’m glad to retreat
from your hiss and spit; when you’re certain I’m humbled,
you follow her along into the field
with one more sibilance that sounds like, “Asshole”;
I drive off with a clear conscience and cosmic permission
to order fried chicken for lunch.